Field
The present invention relates to managing states, and more particularly to systems, methods, and computer program products for managing states relating to mobile commerce transactions, including mobile subscription states and/or mobile wallet states.
Related Art
A service provider (SP) is a company, organization, entity, or the like, that provides services to customers or consumers. Examples of service providers include account-issuing entities such as merchants, card associations, banks, marketing companies, and transit authorities. A service may be an activity, capability, functionality, work, or use that is permitted or provided by a service provider such as a payment service, a gift, offer or loyalty service, transit pass service, and the like.
In a mobile environment that involves contactless transactions between a mobile device and a service provider, information relating to the accounts and applications issued by the service providers are downloaded onto mobile devices in order to enable them to perform the contactless transactions.
A trusted service manager (TSM) is typically an independent entity serving mobile network operators (MNOs) and account-issuing service providers by provisioning applications, such as contactless applications associated with the service providers, to mobile devices. Typical TSMs can distribute and manage the contactless applications remotely because they have access to secure elements (SEs) in a near field communication (NFC) enabled mobile device.
A central TSM typically performs the functions of configuring the mobile device and/or the secure element, such as the provisioning of applications or the updating of data stored on the mobile device or the secure element. The central TSM usually communicates with the mobile device across a mobile network that provides network connectivity to the mobile device. That is, a mobile device generally subscribes to a particular MNO, and the MNO manages the network connectivity of the mobile device while the mobile subscription is maintained. The network connection across the MNO associated with the mobile device is generally known as a mobile line.
However, if a mobile subscription associated with the mobile device is not active, the central TSM may be unable to perform various functions such as provisioning and updating operations, as data transmitted by the central TSM cannot be received by the mobile device. A mobile subscription may be inactive due to, for instance, suspension by the MNO upon reporting of a lost or stolen mobile device. Typically, after initially failing to connect with the mobile device due to an inactive mobile subscription, the central TSM may again attempt to connect with the mobile device at periodic intervals, despite the mobile subscription remaining inactive. These unsuccessful attempts result in wasted expenditure of computing and network resources by the central TSM.
In addition, a customer may wish to temporarily suspend service provider services associated with a mobile device, which may require information updates on multiple components such as the mobile device, the central TSM, and service providers.
As such, one technical challenge involves ensuring the proper storage and management of states, to reduce the unnecessary expenditure of resources.